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Monday, 30 August 2010

A quick search around YouTube, and you will find an amazing collection of stuff. Just like the internet, one can find literally anything on anything. This video below is from the sixties, and has interviews with Australians living in London – the first interviewed is Brett Whitely.

This second YouTube is an early art video from the seventies by Bill Viola. This one I found on a list of the 50 greatest art videos on YouTube as listed by the Guardian/Observer in the UK. That list was from 2008, but by now I suspect there are thousands more art clips to be seen, including all the contemporary artist who see this as a platform to release and share their own work.

Of course there is a lot junk out there in You tube land, and obviously one doesn’t have time to sift through it all. But in saying that, if you know what you are looking for or need a place to store videos to share, then You tube has a lot going for it. Here is a dubious art video – Burger Grease Art – in some ways it says a lot about You Tube, McDonalds and sensationalism.

But one thing I watch on You tube more than anything else, is music videos. Why wait for a good Doco. to come on television, when you can dial up a music clip or interview from practically any time on any artist. Here is ‘Turn up you radio’, by the Masters Apprentices from 1970, Australia.

The good thing and bad thing about You tube is that it constantly changes. Good, because it remains vibrant and interesting, but bad, if a video has been removed, or the link works no more – sort of like life really.

Monday, 23 August 2010

On the outset, this film looks like any regular horror movie. Man enters a haunted house – hotel apartment in this case – and is challenged to come out the next morning mentally and physically well. Over the night a series of supernatural events occur which present the possibility of mental and physical harm. But you would be mistaken if you thought that this would be a mere regurgitation of Hollywood crap.

What makes this not just your regular horror movie; is that it’s genuinely frightening, psychologically demanding, heartbreaking and overall executed with supreme elegance.

Mike Enslin is a middle aged novelist with a troubled history; in the past his daughter died from disease, he split up with his wife and descended into an obsession with the supernatural. It is important to note however, that he is by no means a quack, he is in fact a critical and obscenely cynical skeptic; driven to write horror novels about supposedly haunted rooms he has personally visited and stayed the night at. It is indeed his self-professed goal to encounter a real ghost or poltergeist. His hunt leads him to the Dolphin Hotels’ room 1408, which is where the main course of the film takes place.

This all occurs over the first fifteen or so minutes, and in this short space of time one becomes hopeless attached to the main character, one emphasizes with him, and so the trap is set.

From this point forward we have been acquainted with the two main characters, Mike Enslin and room 1408. And I cite room 1408 as a character, because that is what is. 1408 isn’t haunted by a ghost, a poltergeist or a demon, in Samuel L. Jacksons words – the hotel manger – “its just an evil f##### room”.